


'cause you're a sky full of stars (such a heavenly view)

by troiing



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Hecate has an eidetic memory and I'll fight you on it, Idiots in Love, Stargazing, Ten Years Later, because naked-in-bed fluff is all that matters to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 04:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13356315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troiing/pseuds/troiing
Summary: Hecate tilts her head against the window frame, gazes out at the sky, and for a moment they are fifteen years old, lying ear to ear in cool grass, bickering over stars they can barely see with naked eyes.Forty years later, Hecate stands at Pippa's window with the light of a million million stars ensnared in her hair and begins to name them, one by one.





	'cause you're a sky full of stars (such a heavenly view)

**Author's Note:**

> Matildaswan, my brilliant beta! I love you! Nova, everything I write is just gonna come from you saying "But imagine..." from here on out!
> 
> While it might help to have read the first chapter of [sweetest gifts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13120914), it's not absolutely necessary. There is, however, a throwback to a scene at Pippa's home during the break between Pippa and Hecate's third and fourth year at school.

Pippa’s window faces north.

It’s not a terribly important fact, but Hecate is always more comfortable when she can orientate herself in space and time.

It’s 3am, the horizon gleams with the very earliest vestiges of predawn light—perceptible, but only just—and Pippa is dreaming. Hecate knows this because of the noises she makes from the deepest depths of sleep—snuffles and hums and nonsense murmurs and the occasional bout of quiet snoring.

It is unlike Hecate not to at least try to find sleep when she wakes in the night, but she always feels unbalanced and off-kilter the first night or two at Pentangle’s, always has. Probably always will. She’s spent more than a third of her life teaching and living at Cackle’s Academy, considers it her home, is accustomed to her bedroom nestled comfortably on the southern wing of the school.

So when she woke, not long ago, everything felt simultaneously unsettling and familiar. She lay for a span, letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness, searching what she could see of the room. Rolled over to encounter an elbow. Pippa’s elbow, bent up along the absurd pile of pillows stacked underneath her, her face partially concealed by her curled hand.

Now, Hecate’s lips curl slightly at the thought, but she keeps her gaze on the stars over the treeline, soon to fade out of sight in the rapidly-encroaching morning twilight. Stares fixedly at the sky while she imagines Pippa, pretty and content and smiling in her sleep, naked and bathed in the pale gleam of starlight with a halo of blonde hair strewn haphazardly around her face. Pippa, one hand curled against her cheek, the other fisted at her ribs, fingers tangled loosely in pale pink sheets; twisted at the hip, lying almost on her back but with her knees bent to the side.

Hecate had wondered what she was dreaming about as she rolled carefully out of bed to splash water on her face and against the back of her neck; wonders the same now, kneading at a knot in her right shoulder, the length of her side pressed against the smooth, cool stone of the window frame.

It’s a while before she notices that the room has gone silent, save for the softly-clicking wall clock; she turns to the bed, sees Pippa lying there—sees the light of her eyes, gleaming in the darkness.

Pippa stares for a span: takes in the fall of light across Hecate’s pale skin, the untamed mane of dark, dark hair hanging like a curtain against her back, starlight catching in the occasional silver strand like dew-glazed spider-silk. She gazes, unabashed, and Hecate stares back.

Finally, voice sleep-rough and as lovely as can be, Pippa murmurs: “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She cannot see Hecate’s responding blush, but she knows it’s there. Knows because Hecate’s gaze flutters downward, lips curling upward just the tiniest bit.

“What do you see out there?”

Hecate smiles softly, and turns back to the window. Sighs, touches one finger to the cool windowpane, and stares into the predawn sky. “Ursa Major,” she replies. “The tail of Draco, just above.”

Pippa doesn't ask how Hecate knows it's Draco if she cannot see the whole constellation; she suspects Hecate knows the northern sky as well as she knows the back of her own hand, or the very particular meow Morgana gives when Hecate misses a meal by half an hour or more (Hecate's stomach always seems to rumble on cue when this happens, and it always seems to make her blush a little at her distraction—particularly when said distraction involves Pippa).

“Tell me about them,” Pippa murmurs into the darkness. “Tell me the names of the stars.”

Hecate tilts her head against the window frame, gazes out at the sky, and for a moment they are fifteen years old, lying ear to ear in cool grass, bickering over stars they can barely see with naked eyes. Fifteen years old and falling in love, though neither of them knows it yet: Pippa will not know it until it's too late, though Hecate will learn it soon. Learn, with her arms wrapped around Pippa in the darkness, that she is already in love.

Forty years later, Hecate stands at Pippa's window with the light of a million million stars ensnared in her hair and begins to name them, one by one. “Alkaid, Alcor, Mizar, Megrez, Phecda, Merak, Dubhe. That's the Big Dipper. The rest in Ursa Major: Muscida and Sarir, Talitha, Ta Tsun, Tania Borealis, Tania Australis… Alula Borealis and Alula Australis are still below the horizon. They’ll rise in three, maybe four hours. We won’t see them of course.”

“Just like a couple of stars, hiding themselves away at inopportune times,” Pippa banters softly.

“Hiding?” Hecate asks, turning to face her with a brow arched high, lips tilted into a frown. “It’s the earth’s rotation that—”

Pippa exhales on a note of laughter, brings her fingers to her lips. “They’re hiding, Hiccup,” she insists. “Go on, tell me they’re hiding?”

“Why?”

“Must everything have a reason?”

Hecate smirks, crosses her arms over her chest. “You know it must.”

Pippa laughs again, quiet and sweet as honey. “Fine,” she says before giving one more note of laughter like the chime of a bell. “Because it’s poetic.”

Hecate gazes at her a moment, silent and wondering, before she manages to formulate any response at all. “Really?”

“Mm,” Pippa agrees solemnly, lips curling into a radiant smile that Hecate cannot refuse.

“Alula Borealis and Alula Australis are hiding,” she says a bit stiffly, as if reciting a textbook passage from memory.

The smile spreads across Pippa’s face in the pale moonlight. She resettles in the bed, tugs at the sheet draped haphazardly across her body. “See? Doesn’t it feel like poetry? As if…” she trails off, then waves her hand aimlessly through the air. “As if these giant, powerful balls of—of superheated gas billions and billions of miles away from us, so much bigger and more powerful than we can imagine, are feeling just a bit shy. Maybe they've all got a place and a purpose, but that doesn't mean they want to be seen all the time.”

Hecate's nostrils flare at the last words, and she stands in silence for a while, eyes wide and searching, nails tracing an absent pattern against her own arm. She has always felt an affinity for the stars, never felt troubled by the dark of night or the vastness of space; but she has held Pippa through those fears, had spoken similar words to her years ago to assuage her terror.

“Have you forgotten?” Pippa asks. Although her voice is barely above a whisper, it carries through the room like a summer breeze. “Or did you think I had?”

Hecate smiles at her then, soft and warm in the starlight. “I hadn’t forgotten, no.”

Pippa watches her. Lies in the bed and plays with a flyaway strand of hair and watches her, and doesn’t say how much fear Hecate saved her from, because if she does she will have to say how often she thought of that night, lying with their feet pointing in opposite directions on the gardens of her family home; she’ll have to confess to all the times she clung to Hecate while they were apart with fondness and grief vying within her, to the comfort Hecate had bestowed long after she passed out of Pippa’s life seemingly forever, leaving a long and bitter aching in her wake.

Pippa does not want bittersweet tonight. She doesn't want the guilt that appears on Hecate’s face even now, after more than a decade reunited, whenever the subject of their thirty-year estrangement arises.

So she smiles back, soft and bright, and says: “Keep going. Draco.”

Hecate breathes a laugh, hums contentment, and turns to the window. “From the tail, or alphabetical?”

“Just talk to me, Hiccup.”

“From the tail, then. Giausar, Ketu, Thuban—Thuban was the pole star once. A few thousand years ago. Edasich, Aldhibah, Dziban, Batentaban Borealis, Tyl, Altais. Grumium, Rastaban, Etamin and Kuma form the head.”

“The head’s near Hercules, isn’t it?”

“Mm. It’s a good time of year to view Hercules,” Hecate replies—and she lists those stars too. Draws a map in her mind’s eye and follows the constellations, listing the names of stars and the odd fact about them like a mantra, all from memory, voice steady, lilting and almost musical.

Pippa is reminded that Hecate does not easily forget anything. She makes comments here and there, encouraging Hecate to go on, asking questions, making observations. And then, as dawn envelops the horizon in light, she falls silent, pulled back towards sleep by the steady rhythm of Hecate's voice.

Hecate notices, turns to the bed; Pippa’s eyes flicker open and she smiles, sleepy and content.

“Sorry,” she whispers. She hasn’t moved, and the barest change in light cast across Pippa’s body, leaves Hecate shaking her head softly in reply.

She steps down from the window, taking the few paces across the floor to the bed. She crawls in, leans in close over Pippa’s body to brush a few wayward strands of hair away from her cheek. “That’s alright,” she murmurs, pressing her lips softly against Pippa’s.

Hecate nestles into the crook of Pippa’s arm; Pippa snuffles as she hooks her heel gently behind Hecate’s calf, tangling their legs together, and breathes long and slow and deep as she drifts towards sleep. Hecate tilts her head, watching Pippa’s eyes flutter in the twilight dark.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she says, quiet and reserved—a tender echo of Pippa’s earlier words as exhaustion twines itself around her.

Pippa’s smile illuminates the darkness all on its own.


End file.
